The present invention relates to polymer-reinforced or saturated substrates.
The reinforcement of paper by polymer impregnation (commonly referred to as latex saturation) is a long-established practice. The polymer employed typically is a synthetic material, most often a latex, and the paper may consist solely of cellulosic fibers or of a mixture of cellulosic and noncellulosic fibers. Polymer reinforcement is employed to improve one or more of such properties as dimensional stability, resistance to chemical and environmental degradation, resistance to tearing, embossability, resiliency, conformability, moisture and vapor transmission, and abrasion resistance, among others.
Saturated papers typically have been used as label print stock, base substrates for abrasive papers, and similar applications where strength is an essential requirement. They have not, however, been used for the preparation of garment care labels. Current garment care labels typically are woven or nonwoven fabrics printed by flexography, offset printing or hot stamp printing. While these products generally are satisfactory, the ability to use variable print information by computer generation is not possible. Because of cost constraints, color printing of the care and content label currently is not available. For example, the use of ink jet printing cannot be utilized because the water soluble dyes used in ink jet printers also would be soluble during washing of the garment and the printed information would be lost. Nevertheless, ink jet printing technology provides both advantages of variable information printing and color at low cost. Accordingly, there is a need for a low cost garment label material which is ink jet printable.